KetoAF Macros

(Old material modified from the Facebook group -- see KetoAF: not what you think! for an index of the Facebook posts.)

First pass at a basic guide to macros

KetoAF is a strictly Carnivore diet (in terms of allowable foods) that is also low enough in protein and high enough in fat to be highly ketogenic (as in >1.5 mmol BOHB). This generally means keeping protein close to your calculated minimum and keeping fat at least twice as high as protein by gram.

It is not enough to just eat 2:1 / 80% fat! If your protein isn't lowered, increasing fat will not necessarily achieve the right metabolic state and might even cause fat gain and increased blood sugar.

Protein:

I normally would recommend 1.2-1.4g protein/kg ideal weight as a starting minimum, based on the studies in this article: How much protein is enough?

Some people might be ok on less and some people might need more and it might change from day to day or across larger spans of time. But if it's persistently lower than that, I would be wary of long term tissue damage.

Splitting the protein up into 20-30g portions across the day is helpful for a lot of people.

Fat:

Meals should have ~2-3 g of fat per gram of protein. Lean meat is about ¼ protein, so this looks like at least one third fat by volume or by scale weight.

How much to eat:

There are multiple ways to figure out how much protein and fat you need based on satiation. I can go into that in more detail later. Briefly the best ways I know are: fat-first (eat fat to satiation, and then protein to satiation), multiple small meals (no more than ~30g protein at a time with 60-90g fat) and then see how many of those you need, or titration (start at 2:1 fat to protein by gram with the protein minimum and titrate fat up and then protein up across days until you're getting satiation).

Here is Siobhan Huggins' blog post on KetoAF at Cholesterol Code, describing her fat-first method.

What will not work is eating protein to satiation and then adding double the fat. This is because high protein seems to cause protein to be used for energy, which then displaces the fat and also causes protein cravings.